


Failure is not always imminent

by airsalonpasandpettysquabbles



Series: Prophecies and families [2]
Category: The Books of Beginning Series - John Stephens
Genre: Emma comes to an understanding about Pym, Emma is all grown up :'), For a pre-teen that is, Still Pym angst, The fam is back together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-26 08:14:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21810097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/airsalonpasandpettysquabbles/pseuds/airsalonpasandpettysquabbles
Summary: Pym has failed.His friends think otherwise.
Series: Prophecies and families [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1570522
Comments: 8
Kudos: 4





	Failure is not always imminent

He had failed them. He had died at the hands of his enemy without so much as a goodbye to the children he had roped into the twisted webs of the prophecy. 

Kate, Michael, Emma... they were truly left alone now, with only the broken remains of their already jaded family. And now they didn't even have a proper adult watching over them. Of course, Dr. Pym had to admit, they had gotten pretty good at that over the years. Ten years of watching over themselves had to have become a habit by now. 

Besides, they still had Gabriel, though not a sorcerer, he was a pretty damn good hunter, protector and friend. 

They had King Robbie, a dwarf with more courage, power, and loyalty than he knew. 

And somewhere out there, somewhere deep in the magical tangles of the world, were the children's parents. Dead to the world, but not to them. 

He couldn't imagine what it was like growing up without that support and love, and he wished he could have taken them in, protected them with his heart. But it was just too dangerous. 

He didn't think they had realized that their surname, their fake one, P., stood for him and his magic. A magic that had done its best to protect them all along, even though they didn't know it. This still didn't justify anything. He had still failed.

He hadn't told them the end of the prophecy just as he hadn't told their parents. 

They would hate him for it, when they would figure it out. He just knew it. 

* * *

When Emma, the youngest, had come to the land of the dead to find _The Reckoning_ , he hadn't expected her to forgive him for his lies. But she had. Of course she had, her parents were the same stubborn, loyal, kind sparks of fire she was. The same went for her siblings. 

"Emma... I-"

"I know." Is all she had said. 

Her eyes spoke volumes more than her words did, however, as she had a soft, sorrowful look in them. Almost as if she had known all along from their meeting, years earlier, in Cambridge Falls. 

She had the book clenched in her hands. She stood strong like the tough mountain he knew she was. She knew what she had to do.

He watched silently, afterward, at her moving reunion and final departure with Gabriel. This really was goodbye. This was the end of their journey together. Now the children really were alone.

Of course, until their parents would come. Then again, they would be strangers to one another. They never really got to _know_ their parents. And their parents never really got to know them.

He thought about it, for a while, and came to the conclusion that Gabriel and all the others were more family to the children then their own parents. A wave of fresh sorrow washed over him.

He frowned as he pushed Emma out to the world of the living, where she rightfully belonged. It was all his fault.

"It's not your fault, you know. None of it is."

He turned to see Gabriel /seriously, was the man a mind reader?!/ staring off where Emma stood just before. 

"I'm glad you see it that way. But I fear that it will take a long time, forever perhaps, for me to see it like that."

"Then it is a good thing that we do have forever, here."

Pym almost laughed at the attempt to bring light of the situation. He almost forgot that the world was ending. Almost. 

* * *

Emma, her brother, sister and newly found parents, all arrived on a snowy street that looked like it came from a cheesy Christmas story. It was picture perfect.

Her sister talked idly to their mother, explaining how she remembered a Christmas eve exactly like this one, where they were rushed out of the house in a hurry. She remembered Claire giving her the locket. She remembered the promise she took to keep their siblings safe /a sob escaped her throat at that and Claire looked absolutely heart-broken/. She remembered a strange looking man leaning against an old-fashioned car. A train of thought escaped Kate's mouth, "I wonder if Dr. Pym knows that we've found you."

"Stanislaus knew everything," said their father, who had also branched off into conversation, with Michael at his side.

Emma looked down at her hands and found that they weren't balled up into fists. She had grown up as well, over the last years, and she was far from angry at what Pym had done. She understood. _Take that, Kate, Michael, I'm all grown up too._ And suddenly, she had felt sad. Sad because she had missed a normal childhood with caring and overbearing parents. Sad because her siblings hadn't the chance to enjoy their childhoods either, because they had to watch over her. Sad to know that they could never go back to being kids who jumped from one crappy orphanage to another. A time before they knew who they really were.

But she was alive, and so was her family. They had lost many allies, friends, honorary family members, but their memories lived on in them. 

"Dr. Pym knows. He _did_ know everything. That's what made him so insightful and sympathetic," she looked at her family, who in return tried to decipher the faraway look in her eyes. "I'm just sad we couldn't appreciate more everything he's done for us. Everything, including being there when nobody else was."


End file.
